April 8, 2003

I’ve been asked by The Technology Source to write an article about the Second Superpower ideas and education. TSE goes to teachers and others concerned with the institution of education. Can any of you help me jump start my thinking on this one? My best starting idea is that students and teachers should be blogging and using the tools of online dialogue to mobilize their own emergent point of view in schools. I think this is true, but not particularly brillaint. Perhaps schools should be rethought in terms of cognitive and spiritual communities, linked by various communications media–and all become experimenters in the new discipline of emergent democracy. But I don’t know, concretely, what this means. In any case, anyone have some better ideas?? Thanks!!

7 Responses to “A call for ideas: S2 and education”

Here’s what you can do with a little video. Show the clip from CNN that prompted them to write this on their web site:

“Some residents hoping to return to their daily routines in the capital apparently were lying low, fearing that pro-Saddam Hussein militias might be preparing more attacks.

“But in the Baghdad suburb of Saddam City, residents took to the streets to celebrate the apparent end of the Iraqi regime. A Shiite Muslim leader told a group of 400 to 500 people, ‘The tyrant of the world is finished, thanks to the coalition. Thank God for Iraq the victorious.’”

OT! your right, we get it! 60s utopian pipe dream, check! we smoked it thank god all those berkeleyites moved on to silicon valley to help found the digital revolution

BOT i think it’s sorta been tried and discarded (or at least purchased by redhat in the rise and fall of arsdigita! http://eveander.com/arsdigita-history that doesn’t mean the dream isn’t alive tho! many universities are placing course mat

- Global connectivity might bring kids who live far apart closer (in the sense of actually caring about one another) through shared interests.

- More and more open communities of interest will form that bring together experts and apprentices. Networked conversations will facilitate learning. There is a movement towards a more fluid, organic and self-directed form of education. I recommend reading http://seblogging.cognitivearchitects.com/

Encourage the kids to dialogue about how things are at their school, how they’d like things to be, and why. I write “dialogue” meaning not just top-of-head ideas, but lots of mutual sharing, until some of the changes they suggest come from a collective understanding they’ll be building. Then experiment by putting some of those suggestions into practice, and they can continue the dialogue, now learning from their own experience of how school “should be rethought”.

For some specifics, have the kids start weblogs (you knew that). Include an open weblog for anonymous postings. Also a wiki, for them collect & organize text they like best, so that they get the experience of writing together, and the gems don’t get lost in the weblog archives.

Throughout, also have face-to-face dialogues, some without an adult, and some with — preferably with the adult (and even the kids) facilitating in a help-them-figure-it-out-for-themselves way (as opposed to the i-am-going-to-run-the-agenda method). For more on dialogue, see Dialogue: A Proposal